Quantifying the use of connected digital products in clinical research
Open accessAbstract
Over recent years, the adoption of connected technologies has grown dramatically, with potential for improving health care delivery, research, and patient experience. Yet, little has been documented about the prevalence and use of connected digital products (e.g., products that capture physiological and behavioral metrics) in formal clinical research. Using 18 years of data from ClinicalTrials.gov, we document substantial growth in the use of connected digital products in clinical trials (~34% CAGR) and show that these products have been used across all phases of research and by a diverse group of trial sponsors. We identify four distinct use cases for how such connected products have been integrated within clinical trial design and suggest implications for various stakeholders engaging in clinical research.
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The number of studies using digital products has been growing rapidly in the last few years, with a compound annual growth rate of around 34%.
“Consequently, the number of studies using digital products has been growing rapidly in the last few years, with a compound annual growth rate of around 34% 36 .”
From Multimodal biomedical AI (2022) · cites this paper as [36]
The Results report approximately 34% compound annual growth in clinical trials using connected digital products, and the Discussion specifies that the rate covers 2000–2017. The citing sentence presents that rate as growth over only “the last few years” and describes studies and digital products more broadly than the source measured. (LLM, conf=0.86)
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References 9 · Cited by 92
- Authors
- Marra, C., Chen, J. L., Coravos, A., & Stern, A. D.
- Affiliations
- Harvard University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Stern, Ariel D.
- Venue
- npj Digital Medicine
- Published
- 2020-04-03
- Volume
- 3
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 50-50
- ISSN
- 2398-6352 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC7125096
- OpenAlex
- W3014307806
- Cited by
- 92
- References
- 9
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 13 · 2023: 24 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 13 · 2020: 6
- FWCI
- 14.62
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- npj Digital Medicine (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard (DASH) (Harvard University) (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- Harvard-MIT Center for Regulatory Science
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Mobile Health and mHealth Applications
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Applied Psychology › Digital Mental Health Interventions
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Surgery › Healthcare Technology and Patient Monitoring
- Keywords
- clinical trials, wearable devices, physiological monitoring, behavioral metrics, ClinicalTrials.gov, clinical trial design, trial sponsors, digital health adoption, growth trends
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